Not every search for a Minnesota lost golf course results in a treasure trove of information or a fascinating, revealing road trip to a long-lost resting place of greensward.
Sometimes, dead ends are the order of the daymonth year.
In late 2016, I came across an image of an old golf course in the Lake Mille Lacs area. The inscription on the postcard is self-explanatory:
1935 postcard, golf course at Bay View Hotel, Onamia
Beyond the fact that this golf course once existed, I’m afraid, months later, that I still know nothing (insert your own punchline). Multiple calls to the Onamia area and other searches turned up almost no information on the former golf course near the site of what is now the BayView Bar & Grill. The only known modern-day connection to golf at BayView is that the bar and grill stages an on-ice tournament every year on the frozen surface of Lake Mille Lacs.
BayView — the bar and grill — advertises itself as having been in business since 1897, and in its early years as Bay View Hotel it operated a nine-hole golf course alongside Minnesota Highway 27, 4.5 miles northeast of downtown Onamia and just a couple of hundred yards east of Lake Mille Lacs’ Cove Bay. Judging by an ad in the January 1928 edition of “Fins, Feathers and Fur,” published by the Minnesota Fish and Game Department, the course was established in the mid-1920s. The course featured sand greens, as evidenced by the postcard image. I have no idea when the golf course ceased to operate.
The magazine ad is shown below. And below that is a 1938 aerial photo of the Bay View Hotel’s golf grounds.
1928 magazine ad1939 aerial photo of the Bay View Hotel golf course, courtesy University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library. Lake Mille Lacs is on the left; the hotel’s old airstrip runs diagonally near the bottom-right corner of the photo. A few of the course’s sand greens are clearly visible as small, bright, white circles. Click on the photo for a closer look.
And that’s all I got.
As always, further information about this lost golf course is welcome.
Notes, September 2017: A Minneapolis Tribune story from April 13, 1930, noted that work was nearly completed for the opening of play (presumably for the 1930 season) on the Bay View Golf club links at Onamia, according to A.W. Gustafson, owner. “A large number of Twin City golfers and others from this vicinity,” the newspaper noted, “are expected today.”
Also, an ad in the June 29, 1941, Minneapolis Tribune confirms that the golf course was still operating.
Sept. 21, 1876, west of the city of Madelia, along the banks of the Watonwan River: Shots fired.
May 1921, west of the city of Madelia, not far from the banks of the Watonwan River: Shots fired again.
Honestly, one shouldn’t make much of the similarities. They are coincidence, nothing more. The “shots” couldn’t have been more dissimilar. And although the first incident stands as probably the most significant event in Watonwan County history, the second, by comparison, is about as historically significant as Rory McIlroy clipping his fingernails next Wednesday.
Dispensing with the historically significant first:
In September 1876, three members of the James-Younger gang, which had been foiled 14 days earlier in an attempt to rob the First National Bank of Northfield, made their way through Madelia and then westward as they fled justice through the small towns of southern Minnesota. On Sept. 21, three of the Younger brothers — Cole, Bob and Jim — plus fellow gang member Charlie Pitts skulked through an area known as Hanska Slough (it no longer exists, having been mitigated via drainage ditch) until making a last stand in the Watonwan River, just south of the town of La Salle. A gunfight ensued. Pitts was shot and killed, and the Youngers were captured.
The Northfield bank robbery is widely considered the most famous in U.S. history. The Youngers’ attempted escape has been retold in book, magazine and even poetry form and has been the subject of preservation and re-enactment.
A mural on the Chamber of Commerce building in downtown Madelia depicts the capture of the Younger brothers near La Salle. (Courtesy City of Madelia)
As for the second Madelia-area event, only a handful of souls know anything about it. Stacked up against the story of the flight of the Youngers, may we present a few dozen paragraphs of pure anticlimax:
Forty-four and a half years after and 5.5 miles east of the site of the Youngers’ capture, different brands of foursomes, less threatening than three Youngers and a Pitts, made their way to an area west of Madelia, a few hundred yards north of the Watonwan riverbank.
The Madelia Times-Messenger of May 27, 1921, explains:
“The Madelia Golf Club is now a reality,” the newspaper reported, “a sufficient number having signed the membership roll to make a go of it.
“At a meeting held Monday night, Dr. R.J. Hodapp was made temporary chairman and Dr. M.J. James acted as temporary secretary. It was decided to place the membership fee at $5.00 for this season, and each membership to include the immediate family of the person joining the club.
“A portion of the Siron pasture, comprising about 25 acres, has been secured for the course, and those who are acquainted with the game claim that this tract will make as fine a golf course as is to be found anywhere. It will be a nine-hole course, and there are a sufficient number of mental and physical hazards to satisfy the most exacting.”
” … It is expected that grounds will be ready for play on Memorial Day.”
Madelia Golf Club, contrary to its “best course anywhere” boast, might be described by a term that usually makes me blanch: pasture pool. It’s a term used in jest at best and in the pejorative at worst. But truth be told, it fits the old Madelia GC.
The course was established on an attractive piece of land straddling Elm Creek, two miles west and slightly north of downtown. But its features were rudimentary, in a golfing sense. A Times-Messenger story from May 6, 1921, foreshadowed as much:
“Golf seems to be generally considered a rich man’s game, but we are told that such is not necessarily the case,” the newspaper reported. “Elaborate grounds, club houses, banquets, etc., are not at all necessary. Any old pasture of fifteen or twenty acres will do for a nine-hole course, and its use will not in any way interfere with the cattle which are pastured upon it.”
Bessie, here we come, mashies in hand.
The Madelia course, laid out by four members of the club’s grounds committee, was maintained by livestock grazing on the Siron pasture, which actually was part of the Fred Tiedeken farm, according to Barb Nelson of the Watonwan Historical Society. Although most Minnesota small-town courses of the 1920s and ’30s featured sand greens, which offered at least a modicum of refinement in rolling a ball across the land, the Madelia course had natural-grass greens, probably choppy and less-than-reliable. And golfers occasionally had the distinct pleasure of having to wash their cowpie-tainted golf balls off in nearby Elm Creek, according to Adeline Yates, whose father, Buster Yates, grew up nearby and wrote about the course in his 1986 book, “Seventy-Five Years on the Watonwan.”
“When the course was next to our place,” Buster Yates wrote, “my neighbor buddy, Lucius Siron, and I caddied for the players at a dime a round of nine holes. In our spare time we hunted lost balls and sold them back to people. During hard rains the balls would wash down the hills into the creek from where we would pull ’em out with a garden rake. The old creek produced more than golf balls; in the spring of the year bullheads, northern and walleyed pike and others headed north out of the river for Wilson Lake spawn. (Note: Wilson Lake lies 1.5 miles to the north.)
1939 aerial photo of Madelia Golf Club and surrounding area. Click image for full-size view. Red border shows approximate grounds of Madelia Golf Club, 1921-circa 1930. The road north and east of the grounds is now known as Elm Creek Road. One of the holes was routed in the area between Elm Creek and Elm Creek Road. Downtown Madelia is two miles to the southeast. (Minnesota Department of Natural Resources aerial photo)
“During these years the golfers didn’t have the benefit of daylight saving time for afternoon golfing and a clubhouse for celebrating afterward. Consequently, the course was buzzing with activity at daylight on summer days. Merchants played a round before opening their shops for the day.
“The golf club hired George Lassak, night operator at the railroad depot for part time service in keeping the greens in shape. The grass on the rest of the course was clipped short by our band of a hundred sheep. George didn’t have more than fifty dollars’ worth of tools. A hand push lawn mower, a few rakes and shovels, plus free help from our sheep kept a well- groomed golf links.”
Madelia Golf Club’s inaugural season appears to have been a success. On Oct. 21, 1921, the Times-Messenger filed this note: “These beautiful October mornings find many of our golf enthusiasts on the links bright and early. There is no better tonic than a chase after the little white ball before breakfast.”
On March 20, 1922, Madelia Golf Club drew up articles of incorporation. In late June 1922, the club announced it would be staging a tournament — single-elimination, match play, with handicap — to run through the Fourth of July. And a piece of potentially big news came later that summer. Doc Hall made the announcement with a piece written for the Aug. 18 edition of the Times-Messenger:
“William Clark, professional of the Oak Ridge Country Club of Minneapolis, and a nationally known golf course architect, laid out the nine-hole course of the Madelia Golf Club, Wednesday. He was assisted by several of the members who volunteered their services for the day.
“Mr. Clark was somewhat puzzled by the topography of the land but finally succeeded in laying out what promises to be an extremely ‘sporty’ golf course.
“The total length of the nine holes will be approximately 2880 yards, the shortest hole being 125 yards in length and the longest 550 yards. The creek and sand pits and several hills are used to good advantage in providing the necessary hazards. Mr. Clark remarked on first seeing the course that the land was peculiarly adapted to golf purposes. Only two holes, the third and ninth, will be trapped.
” … After he was through someone asked Mr. Clark how the Madelia course would compare with other courses elsewhere in the state. He replied, saying, that outside of some in the Twin Cities, the local course would surpass anything that he knew of in the state. He said that the old course was only ‘cow pasture pool’ but that now it could be classed as a real golf course.
“Completing his work here, Mr. Clark returned to Minneapolis on the 5:01 train and promises to send the necessary blue prints and instructions for the building up of the course. As soon as these are received the officials of the club will endeavor to start as soon as possible on the construction of the course. In all probability the club members will be able to play over the new course this fall. Grass will be seeded shortly after September 1st and the greens will be staked and planted. A rough estimate of the par of the new course will be 36, but we venture to say that no one will shoot any par golf this year.”
It was a brush with greatness, or at least prettydarngoodness. William Clark was indeed a noted golf course architect. He designed or contributed to the design of at least a dozen Minnesota layouts, including Oak Ridge in Hopkins; Northfield Golf Club; Superior (now Brookview) in Golden Valley; Minneapolis municipal courses Columbia, Armour (now Gross), Southwest (now Meadowbrook) and Glenwood Park (now Wirth); and Chisago Golf Club, now a lost course in Chisago City.
Clark’s plans for Madelia Golf Club never came to pass. The historical society’s Nelson, in conducting extensive research of the Times-Messenger, found no evidence that the club ever made the improvements Clark suggested. By October 1922, the club was in financial distress and seeking an assessment of $10 per member to improve the grounds, a request gussied up by a social gathering and dinner that included “fried chicken … potatoes in various styles, fruit salads, rolls, jelly, apple and pumpkin pie, cheese and coffee,” the newspaper reported.
(I’ll be right over with a 10 spot, if it’s not too late.)
Beyond that, references to Madelia Golf Club are scant. Nelson wrote in an email: “The 1923 newspaper has only two short notices about a golf tournament and scores from that tournament. The 1924 had no information on the course. In August of 1925 Joe Jansen was recognized as Madelia’s champion golfer, after he made the course in 38.”
Madelia Golf Club lasted only until about 1930. That is the approximate closing date posited by Yates in his book. In researching other lost golf courses in southwestern Minnesota a few years ago, I came across references to Madelia competing in inter-club tournaments in the area, but no references beyond 1930. A 1939 aerial photo of the vicinity shows no signs of golf existing there, or in fact ever having existed there, likely due to the course’s rather crude nature.
But Madelia Golf Club still holds a historical distinction. Most likely, it was the first golf course in Watonwan County. Though southwestern Minnesota saw a bumper crop of courses sprout up through the 1920s, I know of no evidence of a golf course in Watonwan County existing before 1921 — and of no other golf course in the county existing again until 1927, when the Tom Vardon-designed St. James Golf Club was established. I believe it was 54 years after that until another golf course opened in Watonwan County, the city-owned Madelia Golf Course, which is still in operation.
The author would like to thank Adeline Yates for the historical and geographic perspective, and especially Barb Nelson of the Watonwan Historical Society for providing the bulk of the material on Madelia Golf Club.
Of the 135 verified lost golf courses in Minnesota (update: 248 as of January 2024), six very early renditions share a common, significant characteristic.
No, the correct answer is not “failure,” even if that is a technically accurate answer for almost any lost golf course.
These six courses, all of them shuttered by 1918 — well, those that had clubhouse doors or windows to shutter — shared this commonality: All bore seeds that were whisked away after the course’s demise and sprouted one or 10 or 100 miles away, helping give rise to the game of golf in Minnesota.
To wit:
Winona Golf Club was the state’s first lost golf course, a sliver of light that flickered for mere months in 1897. WGC led the next year to the establishment of Winona’s Meadow-Brook Golf Club, which in 1901 was host of the first Minnesota State Amateur tournament. Bryn Mawr Golf Club (1898-1910) in western Minneapolis was the Halley’s Comet of early lost courses, shining brightly before famously spawning first Minikahda GC in 1899 and then Interlachen CC in 1910). Roadside Golf Club (1897-1902) in St. Paul was Minnesota’s most female-friendly early course. Merriam Park (1900-1906) was, like Meadow-Brook and Bryn Mawr, a charter member of the Minnesota Golf Association.
The other member of the lost-course sextet similarly left its mark on Minnesota golf at the turn of the 20th century before dissolving in the year … well, danged if I know.
So much for historical precision. Onward …
The first known mention (by that I mean known by me) of golf in the southeastern Minnesota city of Rochester was made by the Rochester Post and Record of May 11, 1900: “There is no reason why Rochester should not have a golf club,” the newspaper story began, and reported that a group of 12 people had begun efforts to organize one. Membership was to cost “$10 for a gentleman alone or $15 for lady and gentleman together.”
The story speculated that a grounds would be established on land owned by F.R. Van Dusen southwest of the city, in a pasture straddling the Zumbro River. Judging by later stories, however, it appears the Van Dusen grounds never were used for Rochester’s first course. Coincidentally, judging by an 1896 plat map, that site appears to be near the current Soldiers Field Golf Course grounds.
By late June 1900, the organization of Rochester’s first golf club was imminent. “The game of golf grows greater in popularity with an increasing number of Rochester people,” the Olmsted County Democrat reported on June 29. “The golf links between the State Hospital and St. John’s cemetery have seen more people in the last three weeks than at any other period in known history. … Golf is a most healthful form of exercise and is much enjoyed by all who have the leisure to play.”
A week later, a group of 23 people met at the home of milling company owner John A. Cole and organized the city’s first golf club. On July 6, 1900, the Post and Record and the Olmsted County Democrat both reported on the organization of the first golf club in Rochester.
“The ‘Silver Creek Golf Club’ is now firmly established in this city,” the Post and Record reported. “The foundation stone has been laid, and the nucleus is formed from which a flourishing and prosperous club will grow.
“The present links are situated about a mile from the city (remember, this is 1900 Rochester, population 6,843, not the current sprawl of 100,000-plus), just north of the Northwestern railroad tracks, and this side of the State hospital. At present, there are only five holes laid out, but owing to the constantly increasing membership, the club finds it necessary to lay out two or three more holes. …
“Never was a golf club formed under more favorable circumstances; never were members more enthusiastic and persevering. If this counts for any thing, as we know it does, then who can doubt the bright future of ‘The Silver Creek Golf club.’ ”
Yeah. Maybe, maybe not.
The club was so named because of its proximity to Silver Creek, which runs from east of Rochester into the city before emptying into the Zumbro River near Silver Lake. The course’s grounds are presumed to have lain near what is now 5th Street Northeast and 15th and 17th Avenues Northeast — east of Calvary Cemetery, which went by the name St. John’s Cemetery until 1940.
1896 plat map of Rochester, Minn., courtesy of John Borchert Map Library, University of Minnesota. Area inside red rectangle at right shows presumed approximate grounds of Silver Creek Golf Club. At the upper-left corner is downtown Rochester.
The first set of Silver Creek club officers made for a distinguished foursome in Rochester business and professional society. Cole was the founding president. Arthur F. Kilbourne, the club’s vice president, was superintendent of the Rochester State Hospital. Secretary John H. Kahler was a prominent Rochester hotelier; one of the businesses his family started still operates in downtown Rochester as The Grand Kahler Hotel. Treasurer George J. Stevens owned a carpet and window-hanging business.
Though the club’s founding members were well-to-do, its golf grounds were modest. “This pasture was maintained by a herd of sheep and a few goats with the greens given more attention by hand mowing,” wrote local golf historian James Gardner, the former longtime greens superintendent at Rochester Golf & Country Club, in 1988. The course “expanded” from five holes to six at some point.
Modesty aside, in its second season of operation, Silver Creek Golf Club helped make Minnesota golf history. On Aug. 29, 1901, representatives of seven golf clubs met in Winona and formed the Minnesota Golf Association. The founding clubs were Bryn Mawr and Minikahda of Minneapolis, Town & Country and Merriam Park of St. Paul, Tatepaha of Faribault, Meadow-Brook of Winona …
… and Silver Creek.
Silver Creek was referred to as Rochester Golf Club in Winona newspaper stories documenting the formation of the MGA and as “Rochester Club” in the minutes of the MGA meeting. But as sure as Jordan Spieth can putt, the Rochester club that was a founding MGA member had its grounds on the Silver Creek site — and was not Rochester Golf & Country Club, a point of confusion in some Minnesota golf quarters.
Rochester’s first golf club is referred to as Silver Creek in a St. Paul Globe story of Aug. 30, 1901, that reported on the formation of the MGA. The newspaper reported that “Cole” — presumably John A. Cole — was elected an MGA director. The minutes of the MGA meeting list “Ireland and Terry” as delegates of “Rochester Club” — and H.J. (Harry) Terry and W.W. Ireland also were listed as Silver Creek members in Rochester newspaper stories from 1900.
And then, poof. Almost as soon as Silver Creek Golf Course came onto the scene, it disappeared.
Or didn’t. Take your pick.
There may be more musty records in a vault somewhere, but advancing past 1901, I could not find a shred of firm evidence that Silver Creek Golf Club saw the dawn of 1902. An archivist’s search at the Olmsted County Historical Society revealed no mention of Silver Creek golf from 1902-15. I contacted three golf historians, including Gardner, and none could confirm that the course existed during that 1902-15 “dead period.”
Silver Creek, a nondescript stream as it runs through the eastern part of Rochester today, once lay alongside Rochester’s first golf course. (November 2016 photo)
The years 1915-17 marked a pivotal period in the development of Rochester golf. There are slightly different versions of stories afoot, but the essence is that Rochester Golf Club was formed, and play began on the club’s current site two miles west of downtown, known today as Rochester Golf & Country Club. Harry Turpie, professional at Red Wing Country Club, designed the original nine holes at the current site, and famed golf-course architect A.W. Tillinghast designed an expansion to 18 holes in the late 1920s. Today, RG&CC is one of Minnesota’s preeminent courses, having hosted the MGA State Amateur Championship five times.
And what of the Rochesterians who in 1900 pumped drives into Silver Creek or fanned mid-mashies into the cemetery? Those people were not one-year golf wonders. As with others at early Minnesota lost courses, many took up the game at new venues, and some became promoters and pioneers of the game.
Gardner confirmed that Silver Creek members Kilbourne, Ireland and Terry also were early Rochester Golf & Country Club members. Harold J. Richardson, a University of Minnesota law student in 1900 who “suffered a ‘swipe’ in the face with a golf stick” at Silver Creek, according to the Olmsted County Democrat, recovered to become a prominent attorney, moved to St. Paul, and had memberships at Town & Country Club, Minikahda, Somerset and White Bear Yacht Club.
Certainly, there were other Silver Creek members whose games emigrated to other courses. And so, Silver Creek joins a group of Minnesota lost golf courses that are gone but should not be forgotten.
POSTSCRIPT
Since my original posting, I have come across a few more references. Unfortunately, they make the history of early Rochester golf as crystal-clear as a dank day in London.
In order, with commentary and amateur analysis:
— The Minneapolis Tribune of Aug. 30, 1901, reported on the forming of the MGA in very similar fashion to the St. Paul Globe of the same date, and also referred to the Rochester Club as Silver Creek.
— The Minneapolis Journal of May 6, 1901, confuses the issue. “The local golf club, which has just been organized, has laid out its links in the southwestern part of the city, and the game promises to be a very popular one this summer.” The geographical reference is befuddling. Silver Creek was/is decidedly in the eastern part of Rochester. Unless Rochester’s first golfers abandoned the Silver Creek layout after the 1900 season and reorganized in 1901 in another location, perhaps on the Van Dusen land southwest of the city, there is a geographical contradiction at play here. And the “just been organized” reference also is confusing, because there was a Rochester club the year before, and the club still was referred to as Silver Creek later in 1901, when the MGA organized. Why would there be “Silver Creek” references in 1901 if the club had relocated?
— I was wrong about references to golf in Rochester vanishing in late 1901. Despite going through many issues of two Rochester newspapers from 1902 and 1903 and then 1914 to no avail, I did find a Minneapolis Journal story reporting on the 1903 MGA state tournament that reads in part, “Two new golf clubs, those of Rochester and St. Cloud, have been added to the state association during the last year.” There was no mention of Silver Creek in the Journal story.
— Yet that story seems to contradict an early document. In 1920, the MGA compiled a list of all member clubs, current and former. “Rochester Golf Club, Aug. 29, 1901,” the document reads, referencing its founding date as an MGA member. “Resigned 1902.”
Resigned. That’s a good word. I do believe I am resigned to not understanding what in the name of Francis Ouimet Rochester residents were doing with their club or clubs and its name or names from 1901 to 1903, not to mention beyond. Further information would, of course, be most welcome.
Minnesota golf history: On the evening of Aug. 29,1901, seven clubs became charter members of the Minnesota Golf Association when the organization convened in Winona for the first time.
Should have been eight.
Roadside got snubbed.
You might not know about Roadside Golf Club. But to channel Rumack to Elaine Dickinson in “Airplane!” — “Roadside, what is it?!” — that’s not important right now.
What is important — well, in a trivial sense, which of course makes no sense at all — is that, at 8 p.m. on that 1901 evening, seven clubs came together to form the MGA: Bryn Mawr of Minneapolis, Meadow-Brook of Winona, Town & Country Club and Merriam Park of St. Paul, Minikahda of Minneapolis, Tatepaha of Faribault (also spelled in some historical entries as Tapeta) and Rochester/Silver Creek (more on that course in a post coming soon).
One more club should have been invited to the party but never was. The St. Paul Globe of Aug. 30, 1901, explained:
“The Roadside club, of St. Paul, was not invited through misunderstanding,” the newspaper reported, “and the secretary was directed to notify that club of the action taken tonight.”
There is no indication from MGA records that Roadside ever joined the organization, and by 1903, the golf course was gone.
I suppose, almost 116 years later, this piece of clerical oversight is entirely inconsequential. But when I came across the Globe entry recently, I just found it curious, so I thought I would waste five minutes of your life that you’ll never get back with the revelation.
As you were.
P.S. 1: In case you’re truly interested in Roadside, Ms. Dickinson, a little bit about the place:
Roadside Golf Club, situated off Summit Avenue in what is now St. Paul’s Merriam Park East neighborhood, was formed in May 1897 by members of St. Paul’s Town & Country Club, Minnesota’s first golf course. As the T&CC members decided to branch out and put another club on the map, they established Roadside 2.5 miles to the east. Its clubhouse address was listed as being on the 1100 block of Summit Avenue. The image below, an inset from an 1898 plat map of Hennepin and Ramsey County and held by the John Borchert Map Library at the University of Minnesota, shows the approximate location of Roadside Golf Club within the red boundary.
Though exact starting dates of Minnesota’s earliest golf courses (as opposed to golf clubs) can be debated, Roadside appears to have been among the first five courses established in the state. It was a 12-hole layout that prominently featured play from Town & CC’s female membership, and it lasted until 1903, when residential St. Paul expansion squeezed it out of existence.
P.S. 2: Below is a copy of the first page of the minutes of the first meeting of the Minnesota Golf Association, as held by the MGA. The minutes likely were not transcribed directly at the meeting but were re-recorded before 1910. Thanks to the MGA and Warren Ryan for permission to use.
What is it? Map of a golf course, now abandoned. The map is neatly and professionally produced, holes ordered and marked with yardage annotated, nearby streets and grounds designated, finely detailed right down to the word “pump” at midcourse.
Who would argue with it?
Sorry. I feel like arguing.
This map of “Elk River Golf Course” — every other reference I’ve seen to the place, which operated in southeastern Sherburne County from 1924-42, is to Elk River Golf Club, but that’s not what I’m here to argue about — has been in reasonably common circulation in and around town, for those who are interested in such a thing. It appears 100 percent, surefire, incontrovertibly credible.
Appears.
In my previous post on Elk River Golf Club, I published a scan of the map. That post also includes a prominent asterisk (if you saw the post and missed the asterisk, someone must have poked your eyes out when you got to that paragraph). Well, as I composed that post, I was all set to hit the “publish” button, sans asterisk, when I decided to phone a longtime Elk River resident just to verify the source of an old ERGC photograph.
Charlie Brown answered his phone, and opened up one big, slippery can of worms.
Thanks, Charlie.
Brown, who lives less than a hundred yards from the old Elk River Golf Club site, on what is now Bailey Point Nature Preserve, near the confluence of the Mississippi and Elk rivers, not only confirmed the source of the photos, he passed along an old scorecard from the golf course:
Cool. I loved it. I always enjoy publishing tangible evidence of lost golf courses, such as old scorecards. This one looked to me to be from the 1920s or ’30s, strictly guessing.
Then I looked closer at the scorecard. And the map. And then the scorecard again. And the map. Repeat, a few dozen times, scratching head.
The map and the scorecard were mismatched.
On the map, hole No. 1 was 255 yards. On the scorecard, it was 206 yards. No. 2 on the map was 204 yards, On the scorecard, 122. No. 3 map, 250. Scorecard, 248. (OK, that was close.) No. 4 map, 183. Scorecard, 311. The mismatches continued through all nine holes, map and scorecard. Many of the yardages were highly similar, and one was identical — the 122 yards of the fifth hole on the map matched the 122 yards of the second hole of the scorecard — but still, there also were significant variations.
An explanation seemed simple and logical — and no, it had nothing to do with possible seismic shifting in southern Sherburne County 80 years ago having moved the earth here and there and everywhere. At some point, the folks running Elk River Golf Club must have re-routed the course, changing the order in which the holes were played, perhaps re-measuring yardages. It wasn’t, and isn’t, an uncommon practice in golf-course design.
Wait just a minute, Gerardus Mercator. (He was a famous mapmaker. I had to look it up, but now you know something about cartography.) Explaining away the difference between Elk River Golf Club, map version, and ERGC, scorecard version, was easy enough if you just say “It was re-routed,” but much more complicated upon looking closely.
After comparing yardages this way and that, looking at the routing on the map, and trying to imagine possible re-routings, I ran my thoughts past Brown. He agreed that a re-routing, or at least a remeasuring or changing of a couple of holes, was almost certain. We traded at least a dozen emails on possibilities, and then I ran our thoughts past the person who knew more about the property than anyone — Elk River resident Steve Shoemaker, who had had his boots on the ground there for more than a year, using a metal detector to dig up cups from the sand greens that remained buried on the property more than 70 years after the golf course had closed.
I felt sheepish about it, because Shoemaker’s discovery had been so remarkable, and he had identified each cup he dug up based on the map, and I felt a bit like I was throwing cold water upon everything. But I wanted to be historically accurate, and thankfully, Shoemaker bought in. I traded a few dozen more messages with both Brown and Shoemaker, and we came to form this consensus:
That map of Elk River Golf Club depicted a course routing that almost certainly never was used.
Without going into minute detail about how we reached this conclusion, the short story is that we believe that the scorecard represented the actual routing and sequence of holes from the course’s inception as a nine-hole layout in 1926 through most of the course’s life span, except for periods in which three holes lying mostly across the Elk River were shut down and the course was a six-holer. And we believe that the map probably was drawn up very late during Elk River Golf Club’s existence, probably within a year either side of 1940, as the club dealt with financial difficulties and consistent flooding on the grounds.
And we believe that the map most likely was just a proposal of a re-routing that never came to be.
For what it’s worth, it’s almost certain that the golf course didn’t start at the north end of the grounds, as shown on the map, but rather near the southeast corner, near the end of a road that ran to the former Elk River Tourist Camp. The routing, in general terms, then took golfers west and then north, then across the Elk River for three holes, including an 82-yard par 3 that crossed the river, concluding with three long-ish holes on the north, central and eastern parts of Bailey’s Point.
Current photo of the edge of what was the fourth hole on Elk River Golf Club, which ran parallel to the Elk River.Near the old third and seventh holes at ERGC, now part of Bailey Point Nature Preserve.
After Brown, Shoemaker and I traded dozens of suspicions on the routing, Brown then came up with a document all but confirming that the “scorecard” routing was indeed used at least at some point. Brown passed along a second map, hand-drawn and shown below, that he had received via Elk River’s Tod Roskaft (click on it for a closer look).
Maybe this was just a long, convoluted exercise in picking at nits, but it did have at least one concrete (or more accurately, metal) benefit: Through the old aerial photos of the grounds and the hand-drawn map, Shoemaker altered his search for the cup from hole No. 4 (labeled hole No. 7 on the more formal map), taking into account that the yardage on the scorecard, 311 yards, was significantly greater than the yardage on the formal map, 199 yards, probably representative of plans the club made, but probably never implemented, in about 1940 to shorten the hole from a par 4 to a par 3. Shoemaker extended his search deeper into what are now relatively thick woods, and voila:
That’s the old fourth cup from Elk River Golf Club, discovered in early November by Shoemaker on the portion of the old golf-club grounds that lay west of the Elk River. It had been a challenge for Shoemaker to find the cup, but the notion that the layout corresponded with the scorecard/hand-drawn map and not with the formal map set him on the correct path. He now is missing only two of the nine cups from ERGC, and assuming they still are out there and buried beneath, I have little doubt he’ll turn them up in time.
Efforts to find someone still living who might remember the routing of Elk River Golf Club have, sadly been fruitless to this point. Anyone who fits the description would almost certainly be in their 90s. If you know of anyone who knows and would like to talk about it, I’d love to pursue.
Also for what it’s worth, the quest to determine whether the ERGC layout ever corresponded with the formal map required some digging — not the kind Shoemaker does — into whens and wheres of the golf club’s history, which evolved into the following timeline:
ELK RIVER GOLF CLUB TIMELINE
Sources in parentheses
1924: Golf course founded on Bailey point (Brook Sullivan booklet), presumably with six holes. Improvements were underway at the adjacent Elk River Tourist Camp, south of the golf course at the confluence of the Elk and Mississippi rivers (Charlie Brown).
1925: Alternate opening year of six-hole course, as implied in 1926 Sherburne County Star News story.
1926: Course expanded to nine holes (Star News), with three additional holes wholly or partially across the Elk River to the west, on a plot known as the Houlton farm.
1927: Course apparently had reverted to its original layout, as Robert Hastings and Joe Flaherty tied for low score of 26 in the Fourth of July picnic event “for the six hole course” (Star News).
1928: “The local club now numbers about 25 members.” (Star News)
1938: Heavy rains in late March May caused severe flooding along the rivers, raising them to their highest levels in 23 years (Brown; Elk River library). Footbridge leading to the ERGC grounds “across the river” was washed out. A June 9 story in the Star News notes the washed-out footbridge and flooded course. The fourth, fifth and sixth holes, lying wholly or partially across the Elk River, were not in play during 1938 (Brown).
1939: “A lengthy discussion regarding the cost of repairing the bridge and getting the holes on the other side of the river in shape.” (Minutes from ERGC meeting, via Brown, via Tod Roskaft)
1942: Course reverts to its six-hole routing, as club decides to take the grounds across the Elk River out of operation (Star News).
1943: Golf grounds “completely flooded” (Star News, April 8.) Also flooded was the “Wilson tourist camp,” as labeled by the Star News, which by then had been closed for nearly two years.
1943 and beyond: No further mention of Elk River Golf Club is found in searching through various years of Star News archives, into the 1950s.
1960: A new Elk River Golf Club is established in the northwestern part of the city. It continues to operate today.
Note: Charlie Brown entries based on research he conducted at Elk River’s Great River Regional Library.
